Whoo, it's not that far away now! There's still lots to do yet, but I'm trying to focus on one thing at a time, or I'll drive myself crazy.

James and I went to New Jersey for a week in March, initially for the purposes of wedding planning but ultimately the week became more about visiting the Boston area for job searching and house hunting than it was about wedding stuff. But that was good too, since we got (verbal) job offers and found a house we'd like to buy, and we'll need both when we move back East. We had hoped to move back after the wedding and honeymoon - we've been planning on the honeymoon being a cross-country road-and-camping trip from LA to Boston to get the car (and a carload of stuff) across the country. But the jobs want us to start by the end of April (that's THIS month!!), so we'll have to move much sooner than anticipated. We're packing up like crazy and getting ready to hire a truck to haul the majority of our stuff back East. Luckily, the new jobs will let us take time off to have the honeymoon we want (more details on the honeymoon plans later). But things are a bit stressful since we haven't received written offers from the Boston Raytheon yet, so nothing (including our start date) is set in stone, which means we can't buy plane tickets or order a moving truck or find temporary housing for our first month or two over there. Not knowing where we're going to live in three weeks - or even, really, what coast we'll be on - is unsettling.

But we did get some wedding stuff done while back in Pitman. We met with the florist and finalized most of the details. We're still waiting for the mothers to pick their dresses so we can coordinate their flowers with the color, but other than that the flowers are all decided. We also spontaneously stopped by the caterers, and they very graciously stopped what they were doing to answer a few questions. We finalized the details of the menu and found out that we can have our guests hold sparklers outside as James and I make our grand exit. Exciting!

Also, I got my Martha Stewart on. James and I went to a crafts store and loaded up of silk flowers and cute baskets: one to hold programs, one each for the mens' and womens' bathrooms, and one to hold the sparkelers for the end of the night. The silk flowers match the fresh flowers that will be used throughout the wedding: Peonies will be the featured flower of the day, hydrangeas will be in flower arrangements and bridesmaids bouquets, and freesia will be in my hair and bouquet, and they'll be the sole flower in James' boutonneire.

The finished product!

It was fun to do, even though I burned my self quite a bit with hot glue.